Man dies in shooting in St. Paul's North End
Updated: 2:37 p.m. Tuesday | Posted: 10 p.m. Sunday
A man is dead after a shooting Sunday in St. Paul's North End neighborhood.
It's the 30th homicide of the year in St. Paul, a total that includes the police shooting of Ronald Davis in September.
On Sunday, police were called to the 900 block of Rice Street at about 5 p.m. on a report that a man had been shot. Officers located a man with a gunshot wound inside a vehicle on Wayzata Street, just east of Rice Street.
The man was unconscious and not breathing; he was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim of the weekend shooting was identified as 20-year-old Daniel Olvera. No one was in custody as of Sunday night.
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St. Paul police spokesperson Mike Ernster said police have been stepping up their efforts to stop the violence and take illegal guns off the street.
“The chief said it earlier last week, that we are working with our local, state and federal partners to hold the people responsible that are pulling the trigger,” Ernster said, “and he had a direct message to them, that if they feel comfortable pulling the trigger in our city that we will use every resource we have available to hold them responsible.”
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call St. Paul police at (651) 266-5650.
It's the fifth time in the last nine weeks that police have been called to investigate a serious gun crime on a Sunday, including four slayings and a shooting that injured two people across the street from a soccer playoff game at Allianz Field on Oct. 20.
Most of the homicides in St. Paul in 2019 have involved firearms. The number of shooting deaths in the city and the frequency at which guns, mostly handguns, have been used to kill are the highest in more than two decades.
The number of shootings — fatal and non-fatal — in St. Paul in 2019 has drawn the attention of not just city leaders, but also state and federal officials.
St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell said last week that he has reassigned officers to help shore up the department’s patrol and investigations units. Officers have taken more than 530 guns off the street this year, more than last year.
MPR News reporter Tim Nelson contributed to this story.